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EDWARD CARPENTER: 
POET AND PROPHET 



BY 

ERNEST^ CROSBY 

Author of ' '■ Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable 



1 90 1 
THE CONSERVATOR 

PHILADELPHIA 



1 



Next follows the explanation of the Infinite as the Self ; Self is be- 
low, above, behind, before, right and left — Self is all this. 

He who sees, perceives, and understands this, loves the Self, de- 
lights in the Self, revels in the Self, rejoices in the Self — he becomes 
an autocrat ; he is lord and master in all the worlds. . . . 

But those who think differently from this, live in perishable worlds, 
and have other beings for their rulers. — Khandogya- Upanishaci , VII, 

25- 

He who beholds all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, 
he never turns away from it. 

When to a man who understands, the Self has become all things, 
what sorrow, VN'hat trouble can there be to him v/ho once beheld that 
unity ? — Vagasaneyi-Samhita- Upanishaci, 6-7. 



EDWARD CARPENTER: POET 
AND PROPHET 

Prophets usually have the defects of their good quali- 
ties. They are often narrow, intolerant and over stren- 
uous, and they rarely possess a saving sense of humor. 
Edward Carpenter is, however, a conspicuous exception ; 
he is without question a prophet, but in his writings at 
any rate he has escaped these failings of his order. 
There is a sweet reasonableness in his wildest assertions, 
and a twinkle of merriment in his eye when his thought 
is at its deepest, that are intensely refreshing to one who 
loves prophets and yet wearies at times of their stress 
and strain. One hallmark of the prophet he emphati- 
cally has : he is without honor in his own country ; for 
the high measure of fame which he enjoys among a few 
choice souls, who would generally be classed as cranks, 
could hardly be called honor in the acceptation of the 
bookmongers of the day. True, one of his volumes is 
in the fifth edition, but it is quite safe to assert that 
neither Lord Salisbury nor Mr. Chamberlain nor the 
Archbishop of Canterbury is familiar with its contents ; 
and it is amusing to read in the list of essays in another 
book the names of the obscure and defunct journals in 

(I) 



2 Edward Carpenter 

which they first appeared, during a period in which the 
standard reviews were printing the usual mass of rubbish, 
Httle conscious that they were turning their backs upon 
noteworthy contributions to the permanent literature of 
England. Carpenter is a lecturer, too, as well as an 
author and poet, but dukes do not take the chair when 
he appears on the platform, nor does * ' society ' ' throng 
him. He is rather to be found talking in dimly lighted 
rooms to a score or two of workingmen. 

Yet the world had every reason to give Carpenter a 
good reception. He was a Brahmin of the Brahmins, 
born in easy circumstances at Brighton, in 1844, edu- 
cated at Cambridge, a fellow of his college, and for some 
time curate under Frederick Denison Maurice. But he 
soon threw up his fellowship and relinquished orders, 
devoting himself to the duties of a university extension 
lecturer on science and music. Leaves of Grass made a 
profound impression upon him, and in 1877, and again 
in 1884, he made pilgrimages to the home of Walt 
Whitman, at Camden, New Jersey, finding the poet still 
greater than his works. Overcome with disgust for the 
civilization which hedged him in from the mass of his 
fellowmen, and falling in love with the classes that do 
the hard work of the world. Carpenter went in 1881 to 
share a laborer's cottage near Shefiield, and to work 
with him in the fields. There he lives still, passing a 
part of the year with a mechanic in the neighboring city, 



Poet and Prophet 3 

where he has built up a considerable business in the 
manufacture of sandals, of which I shall have more to 
say hereafter. Meanwhile he writes poetry and prose 
and lectures on matters social and economic. In short, 
Carpenter loves his nighbor in deed as well as in word, 
and has of necessity ceased to be respectable. His so- 
called college ' ' fellowship ' ' was reputable, and from that 
post his writings might have reached polite society (as 
Ruskin's did), but the fellow of Yorkshire farm and fac- 
tory hands ! how could the world be expected to listen 
to such a man ? 

Carpenter's first and greatest work, Towards Democ- 
racy, appeared in 1883, and a third edition of it, con- 
taining many additions, came out in 1892. It is a collec- 
tion of poems in the rhymeless, rhythmless form of 
Whitman, and in it he has given the strongest and most 
emotional expression to his inner vision. In 1887 he 
printed several papers in book form under the title, 
England's Ideal, and two years later followed Civiliza- 
tion, Its Cause and Cure, another volume of essays. His 
Love's Coming of Age, with a supplementary pamphlet, 
presents his views on the relation of the sexes, while 
Angels' Wings gives his conception of art and music. 
These books, taken together, with a book of travels in 
India, and various articles in magazines, form the pres- 
ent corpus of his work — a unique achievement, uncon- 
ventional, original, thoughtful, brilliant, and not to be 



4 Edward Carpenter 

ignored. They possess the vital spark and may be con- 
tent to come into notice slowly, like the sprout from the 
tiny pineseed in a field of overgrown weeds. 

Carpenter is forever to be associated with Whitman. 
The two men differ from each other and yet it is not 
easy to point out the difference. They have practically 
the same ' ' welt-anschauung ' ' or world-conception, as 
the Germans so expressively say. We for the most part 
lack comprehensive conceptions of the world as well as 
a term for them, but Whitman and Carpenter are both 
farsighted beyond their fellows and they preserve a sim- 
ilar and consistent point of view. They see life as a^ 
great and transcendent unity, welling up in innumerable 
forms but always in effect the same, entitled to the same 
reverence and love, and their hearts go forth to this life. 
Whitman found himself gazing at the world from this 
new outlook with the unreasoning astonishment of a 
child, and he blurted what he saw with a force and 
originality which can never be surpassed. Carpenter 
saw the same sight but he knew what he saw ; he has 
the great advantage — and the great disadvantage — of self 
consciousness. He sees what Whitman sees, but he 
also sees something of the reason of it. He naturally 
classifies and deduces and forms the outlines of a system, 
while Whitman, when he undertakes in prose to give the 
upshot of his poetry, fails signally to appreciate its im- 
port. Leaves of Grass is the impassioned cry of a bright 



Poet and Prophet 5 

child as he first sees the beauties of his father's new 
house and garden. Carpenter's books embody the 
poetry and philosophy of a mature man who knows a 
little about horticulture and masonry and can compre- 
hend the adaptation of houses and gardens to their uses. 
The difference is perhaps one rather of education than 
of genius, but we may be thankful for it, for the world 
scarcely requires another Whitman yet, while there was 
need for a calmer and more comprehensive view of the 
landmarks of the new world. Of course, in surmising 
that Carpenter sees just what Whitman saw, I do not 
mean at all to doubt the former's originality. I have yet, 
however, to find a line in Leaves of Grass to which I 
should not expect the author of Towards Democracy to 
give his fullest assent. The sympathy of the younger 
for the older poet is complete, and in two articles which 
he has written describing his visits to Walt's home at 
Camden, he has, as it seems to me, shown more insight 
into the character of the old man, and the hard-fought 
struggles which it summed up, than any other writer 
whom I can recall.* 

To do justice to an author we must attempt to catch 
something of his spirit, and it is in his poems, contained 
in Towards Democracy, that Carpenter's spirit and 
character show themselves most clearly. The name of 
the book is the worst thing about it. To feel its signifi- 

* Progressive Review, London, 1897. 



6 Edward Carpenter 

cance we must go back to the France of the eighteenth 
century, when democracy was still a dream and when the 
name had not been debased by association with discour- 
aging experiments and narrow parties. We must con- 
clude from Carpenter's use of the term ** democracy" 
that its original polish has not worn off as completely 
in England as it has in America.* He certainly had not 
in mind its etymological derivation, as implying the rule 
of the people in any sense by majority votes, represent- 
ative institutions or the initiative and referendum. I can 
only ascribe his infelicitous choice of a title to the com- 
mon weakness shown by distinguished writers in naming 
their literary offspring, f 

The long series of poems in Towards Democracy is 
with few exceptions written in the Whitmanesque meter, 
or lack of meter. I do not regard this fact as a sign of 
imitation but rather of the natural adaptation of this style 
to the new and fresh conception of the universe which is 
common to both poets. The trim balance of a Christ- 
mas tree with its colored candles and gilt balls and stars 

* We hold the words of our language in trust for posterity. What breaches of 
trust lie at our door ! We might trace the story of a nation's decadence in its suc- 
cessive dictionaries. The words "tyrant" and "despot" were once honorable. 

■j- The names of most of Shakespeare's comedies might be drawn from a hat and 
applied indiscriminately without in any way injuring their effectiveness. The titles 
of Kipling's best stories seem to bear slight relationship to their contents. His book. 
Mine Own People, begins with the story of an ape ! I fear this was an unconscious 
adoption of the lower animals as brothers. 



Poet and Prophet 7 

is beautiful in its way, but the very want of symmetry 
helps to make the oak and the pine kings of the forest. 
And it is out of doors and into the forest that the new 
love of nature drives men — away from the orderly courts 
of princes into the tumult of the market place. Even 
blank verse with all its grandeur is too suggestive of 
landscape gardening and the studied roughness of ' ' rock 
gardens." When Carpenter tries it he does not suc- 
ceed, and he tells us that he feels obliged to write his 
poetry in the open air, for indoors it will insist on rhym- 
ing and rhythming. He wishes it to be instinct with 
the life of nature, to represent the * * serene, untampered 
facts of earth and sky" (Towards Democracy, p. 16.) 
As he says in a later poem (After Long Ages, Towards 
Democracy, p. 247) : 

Great ragged clouds wild over the sky careering, pass 
changing, shifting through my poems ! 

Blow, O breezes, mingle, O winds, with these words 
— whose purpose is the same as yours ! 

Clouds and winds will not submit to architectural art, 
nor will the deep cry for brotherhood and unity which 
Whitman and Carpenter both utter. It is idle to call 
their poetr}'' formless ; it creates its own form and refuses 
to crawl into the chrysalis of earlier verse. On the first 
page of his poems Carpenter strikes, as in an overture, 
the various motifs of his work. "Deep as the uni- 
verse is my life," he cries, and then 



8 Edward Carpenter 

Freedom ! the deep breath ! the word heard centuries 
and centuries beforehand : the soul singing low and 
passionate to itself: Joy ! joy ! 

Freedom and joy in the life universal : that is the mes- 
sage of Carpenter ; and who will say that there is a bet- 
ter one for the world of today ? The poet has felt the 
world's need and experienced it, and he has found the 
remedy springing up at the bottom of his heart, and now 
he comes to share his discovery with his fellow-men. 

The gates are thrown wide open all through the uni- 
verse. I go to and fro — through the heights and depths 
I go and I return : All is well. (Towards Democ- 
racy, p. 5.) 

This universality of life makes the lowest equal to the 
highest. 

If I am not level with the lowest, I am nothing. (To- 
wards Democracy, p. 6.) 

To descend, first : 

To feel downwards and downwards through this wretch- 
ed maze of shame for the solid ground — to come close to 
the Earth itself and those who live in direct contact with 
it. 

To identify, to saturate yourself with these, . . . 

This ... is the first thing. (Towards Democracy, 
p. 28.) 

Are you laughed at, are you scorned ? 

My, child, there is One that not only thinks of you, 



Poet and Prophet 9 

but who cannot at all get on without you. (Towards 
Democracy, p. 34.) 

In Carpenter's case this sympathy for the lowly does 
not come as a deduction from the oneness of life ; 
rather was it through this sympathy that he found the 
great all-inclusive life ; it was the clue to the secret. In 
the midst of the artificial existence of his class he had 
been oppressed by the shams and conventions which 
hemmed him in. In the drawing room, in the street, at 
the railway station, he could not escape them. 

Was this then the sum of life ? 

A grinning, gibbering organization of negations — a 
polite trap, and circle of endlessly complaisant faces 
bowing you back from reality ! . . . 

Well, as it happened just then — and as we stopped at 
a small way station — my eyes from their swoon-sleep 
opening, encountered the grimy and oil-besmeared figure 
of a stoker. 

Close at my elbow on the footplate of his engine he 
was standing, devouring bread and cheese. 

And the fire-light fell on him brightly as for a moment 
his eyes rested on mine. 

That was all, but it was enough. 

The youthful face, yet so experienced and calm, was 
enough ; 

The quiet look, the straight untroubled unseeking 
eyes, resting upon me — giving me without any ado the 
thing I needed . . . 



lo Edward Carpenter 

For in a moment I felt the sting and torrent of Real- 
ity. 

The swift nights out in the rain I felt, and the great 
black sky overhead, and the flashing of red and green 
lights in the forward distance. 

The anxious straining for a glimpse sideways into the 
darkness — cap tied tightly on — the dash of cold and wet 
above, the heat below — 

All this I felt, as if it had been myself. . . . 

O eyes, O face, how in that moment without any ado 
you gave me all ! 

How in a moment the whole vampire brood of flat 
paralytic faces fled away, and you gave me back the 
great breasts of Nature, when I was rejected of others 
and like to die of starvation. (Towards Democracy, 
pp. 140-3- ) 

It was when confronted with men such as the stoker 
that Carpenter's soul found its bearings : in * 'society" 
so called he felt himself hopelessly adrift. In his Sun- 
day Morning After Church he gives a description of the 
aimless well dressed mob on the esplanade at a watering 
place, and as he sits watching them he closes his eyes 
for an instant, and visions of the naked and outcast rise 
before him : 

The mother snatches some half-pence from her boy 
matchseller and makes for the nearest gin-shop ; squalid 
streets and courts are in the background and filthy work- 
shops ; . . . 



Poet and Prophet n, 

I open my eyes again. The gay crowd still glides 
past, exchanging greetings, the flounces and lace are 
still on the chair beside me. I catch the fluffy smell. 

I rise and pass down towards the sea. It lies there, 
unnoticed as before, slate-green and solemn, stretching 
miles and miles away ; but the wind has risen and is 
rising, and in the distance here and there it is fretful 
with sharp white teeth. (Towards Democracy, 1 15-18.) 

A world which ignored the misery upon which its 
prosperity was founded, and which denied the essential 
unity of the poor and criminal with itself, was a hollow 
imposture and Carpenter would have none of it. 

The reader may have remarked in these extracts that 
Carpenter has Whitman's power of calling up a scene 
vividly in a few words. Here are other examples : 

I hear the sound of the whetting of scythes. 

The beautiful grass stands tall in the meadows, mixed 
with sorrel and buttercups ; the steamships move on 
across the sea, leaving trails of distant smoke. I see 
the tall white cliffs of Albion. (Towards Democracy, 
P- 52.) 

The drunken father reeling home in the rain across 
country — he has more than a mile to go — singing, curs- 
ing, tumbling hands and knees in the mire — the son fol- 
lowing unbeknown at a little distance (he has been watch- 
ing a long time for his father outside the beershop) ; the 
late moon rising on the strange scene, the hiccuped 
oaths of the old man through the silence of the night. 
(Towards Democracy, p. 71.) 



12 Edward Carpenter 

The baffling infant face, with closed eyes and flexible 
upper lip, and storms and sunshine sweeping across its 
tiny orb, and filmy clouds of expression. (Towards 
Democracy, p. 302.) 

The aged grandmother sits in the ruddy glow of the 
chimney-corner — her little grandson leans against her 
knee — 

The other children (for some have come in from the 
neighboring cottage, and Christmas is now approaching) 
sing hymn after hymn in tireless trebles, and the old 
grand-dad tones the bass in now and then with still melo- 
dious voice : 

While silent, with tired and suffering face (thinking of 
the week's work and of her runaway drunken husband) 
the mother strips her youngest naked in the firelight. 
(Towards Democracy, p. 302.) 

This same power of description is shown conspicuously 
in Carpenter's picture of the steerage of a transatlantic 
liner and its occupants (Towards Democracy, p. 203 et 
sequ. ) and in his lifelike survey of the different parts of 
England, modeled on Whitman's bird'seye view of the 
American States. (Towards Democracy, pp. 52-58.) 

The key to Carpenter's philosophy lies in the history 
of his experience. Rebelling as we have seen against 
the false restraints of the unreal society in which he 
lived, he found his outlet into the universal life of those 
who were humblest and nearest to nature. In the con- 
sciousness of the life universal thus acquired he assumes 



Poet and Prophet 13 

another standpoint and sees all things new. His sym- 
pathy, his love, react upon him in the form of a revela- 
tion, and it is a transfigured love, supreme over death 
and fate, which he is now inspired to sing : 

Because thou rulest, O glorious, and before thee all 
else fails, 

And at thy dread new command — at thy word Democ- 
racy — the children of the earth and the sea and the sky 
find their voices, and the despised things come forth and 
rejoice ; 

Because in thy arms, O strong one, I laugh death to 
scorn — nay I go forth to meet him with gladness, . . . 

Because out of disallowed and unaccepted things — and 
always out of these — full-armed and terrific, 

Like a smiting and consuming flame, O Love, O De- 
mocracy, 

Even out of the faces and bodies of the huge and 
tameless multitudes of the Earth — 

A great ocean of fire with myriad tongues licking the 
vault of heaven. 

Thou arisest — 

Therefore, O Love, O Flame, wherein I burning die 
and am consumed — carried aloft to the stars a disem- 
bodied voice — 

O dread Creator and Destroyer, 

Do I praise Thee. (Towards Democracy, pp. 170-1. ) 

Passing by, passing by all exteriors. 
Swimming, floating on the Ocean that has innumera- 
ble bays — 



14 Edward Carpenter 

I too at length nestle down in thy breast, O humanity; 

Tired, I abandon myself to thee, to be washed from 
the dust of life in thy waves. (Towards Democracy, 
p. 332.) 

In one of his most beautiful poems he develops this 
idea : 

All night by the shore, . . . 

I am a bit of the shore : the waves feed upon me, they 
come pasturing over me ; . . . 

I am a little arm of the sea ; the same tumbling, 
swooning dream goes on — I feel the waves all around 
me, I spread myself through them. . . . 

I am detached, I disentangle myself from the shore : 
I have become free — I float out and mingle with the 
rest. . . . 

Suddenly I am the great living Ocean itself — the awful 
Spirit of Immensity creeps over my face. 

I am in love with it. All night and ages and ages 
long and for ever I pour my soul out to it in love. 

I spread myself out broader and broader forever, that 
I may touch it and be with it everywhere. 

I know but I do not care any longer which my own 
particular body is — all conditions and fortunes are mine. 

By the ever beautiful coast-line of human life, by all 
shores, in all climates and countries, by every secluded 
nook and inlet, 

Under the eye of my beloved Spirit I glide : 

O joy ! forever, ever joy ! (Towards Democracy, 
p. 158.) 

And this "expanded identity" (Towards Democ- 



Poet a?id Prophet 15 

racy, p. 158) which is Carpenter's root thought is felt 
now and does not wait for death. 

death, I shall conquer thee yet. . . . 

Long, long years ago did I not abandon this frail tene- 
ment, all but in name ? — was not my last furniture packed 
up and ready to be transported ? 

The virgin grass received me, and the beech trees so 
tenderly green in Spring, and the bodies of my lovers 
that I loved ; . . . 

1 passed freely and floated on the ocean of which I 
had only been part of the shore. (Towards Democ- 
racy, pp. 329-330-) 

It is no wonder that a man who has passed through 
such feelings should be blest with universal sympathies, 
especially towards the humble and simple. Carpenter is 
devoted to the children of the poor ; again and again in 
his poetry we meet the '* little ragged boy" (Towards 
Democracy, p. 145), "the pale smudged face, . . . 
the curls fringing his dirty cap." (Towards Democ- 
racy, p. 150.) For him the inanimate world, too, is 
alive and to be loved as a living thing. The very air, 
"the dainty sweet air," is to him "the outbreath of 
innumerable creatures." There is, however, apparently, 
one exception to his rule of universal love. Carpenter 
has little affection for the Pharisee — the respectable, 
pious, well-to-do individual who thinks that the lower 
classes are made to serve as his pedestal. 



1 6 Edward Carpenter 

I come forth from the darkness to smite Thee — 
Who art thou, insolent of all the earth, 
With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread 
And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils 
Daylong and nightlong dark in the earth for thee ? 
Coward without a name ! (Towards Democracy, p. 
130.) 

The evil in the Pharisee is almost the only evil which 
he recognizes. Our passions are good in themselves, 
but we must not let them rule us. 

For (over and over again) there is nothing that is evil 
except because a man has not mastery over it ; and there 
is no good thing that is not evil if it have mastery over 
a man. . . . 

Things cannot be divided into good and evil, but all 
are good so soon as they are brought into subjection. 
(Towards Democracy, p. 362.) 

When thy body — as needs must happen at times — is 
carried away on the wind of passion, say not thou * ' I 
desire this or that :" 

For the " I " neither desires nor fears anything, but 
is free and in everlasting glory, dwelling in heaven and 
pouring out joy like the sun on all sides. 

Let not that precious thing by any confusion be drawn 
down and entangled in the world of opposites, and of 
death and suffering. (Towards Democracy, p. 346.) 

The body is to be honored as well as the soul ; it is 
even the ' ' latest and best gift long concealed from men. " 



Poet and Prophet 17 

Let the strong desires come and go ; refuse them not, 
disown them not ; but think not that in them lurks finally 
the thing you want. 

Presently they will fade away and into the intolerable 
light will dissolve like gossamers before the sun. (To- 
wards Democracy, p. 172.) 

The old moral rules which required a man to suppress 
his instincts resulted in the production of ' ' slaves of 
chastity, slaves of unchastity." Carpenter's aim is be- 
yond all that : 

Passing the boundaries of evil, being delivered, being 
filled with joy, . . . 

Content, overjoyed, knowing that I have yet far to go ; 
but that all is open and free and that Thou wilt pro- 
vide — 

Gladly, O gladly, I surrender myself to Thee. To- 
wards Democracy, 253.) 

The advantage which Carpenter enjoys in the rhythmic 
form which he has chosen for his work lies chiefly in its 
wide range. He can, when the subject matter demands 
it, write in the baldest prose, and choose, if he please, 
the language of the streets, but again he can give us the 
purest music. Towards Democracy has the merits of 
both prose and poetry and the two run into each other 
imperceptibly and without a break. The new poetry of 
democracy needs an instrument of wider register and 
Whitman and Carpenter have found it. The form is 



1 8 Edward Carpenter 

poetical whenever the sentiment demands it. Who fails 
to hear music in these lines for instance ? 

High in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime — 
Midnight. 

The great city sleeps with arms outstretched, supine 
under the stars — deep-breathing, hushed — 

Into the kennels of sleep are gone the loud-baying 
cares of day, and hunted man rests for a moment. . . . 

To the waking fever of remorse ; 

To the long cadaverous vigil of physical pain ; 

And to the long vigil of the heart-broken wife praying 
vainly for respite from thought ; 

The hour swings onward. 

High in heaven over the supine city — over the wilder- 
ness of roofs beneath the stars — 

The hour swings surely onward. (Towards Democ- 
racy, pp. 1 19-120.) 

Carpenter is indeed more often a poet in the conven- 
tional acceptance of the term — is more nearly related to 
Shelley and Poe, in form at least — than is Walt Whit- 
man. 

Carpenter finds a microcosm in himself and constructs 
a history of the world from his own experience. Scien- 
tists have declared that the record of life on this planet 
for hundreds of thousands of years may be read in the 
development of a single fetus ; Carpenter as clearly and 
as scientifically deciphers it in the biography of his con- 
sciousness. Just as he was bound hand and foot by the 



Poet and Prophet 19 

customs and prejudices of his class, just as he burst forth 
into comparative freedom, so the history of all life is a 
history of imprisonment by the ossified forms of the 
past and of the breaking forth of the new life to the light 
and air, and of the casting aside of the outworn husk. 

Lo ! the Conscience, the tender green shoot in each 
one, growing, arising, Ygdrasil casting its leaves, ele- 
ments and nations over the universe ! 

Lo ! the moral laws so long swathing the soul, loos- 
ing, parting at last for the liberation of that which they 
prepared. (Towards Democracy, p. 105.) 

I choke ! . . . 

(The natural sheath protecting the young bud — fit- 
ting close, stranglingly close, till the young thing gains 
a little more power, and then falling dry, useless, to the 
ground.) 

Strangled, O God ? Nay — the circle of gibbering 
faces draws closer, the droning noises become louder, 
the weight gets heavier, unbearable — One instant strug- 
gle ! and lo ! 

It is over ! — daylight ! the sweet rain is falling and I 
hear the songs of birds. (Towards Democracy, p. 27.) 

And he sees the same change effected in others : 

I saw a vision of Earth's multitudes going up and 
down over the Earth — and I saw the great Earth itself 
wheeling and careering onward through space. 

And behold ! here and there to one among the multi- 
tude a change came ; 



20 Edward Carpenter 

And to whomsoever it came continued onward as be- 
fore — yet as from the larva springs the perfect image, 

So (as it appeared to me) from the mortal form a new 
being — long, long, long in preparation — glided silently 
up unobserved into the breathless pure height of the sky. 
(Towards Democracy, pp. 332-3.) 

In his fine poem After Long Ages, perhaps his most 
significant work (Towards Democracy, pp. 218-258), he 
develops this idea in its wider bearings : 

This is the order of man and of history ; 

Descending he runs to and fro over the world, and 
dwells (for a time) among things that have no sense ; 

Forgetful of his true self he becomes a selfseeker 
among the shadows. 

But out of these spring only war and conflict and 
tangling of roots and branches ; 

And things which have no sense succeed things which 
have no sense — for nothing can have any sense but by 
reason of that of which it is the shadow — and one phan- 
tasmal order follows another — and one pleasure or in- 
dulgence another — and one duty or denial another — 

Till, bewildered and disgusted, finding no rest, no 
peace, but everywhere only disappointment. 

He returns (and History returns) seeking for that 
which is. 

Toilsome and long is the journey ; shell after shell, 
envelope after envelope, he discards. 

Over the mountains, over the frowning barriers, un- 
daunted, unwrapping all that detains him. 



Poet and Prophet 21 

Enduring poverty, brother of the outcast and of ani- 
mals, enduring ridicule and scorn, 

Through vast morasses, by starlight and dawn, 
through dangers and labors and nakedness, through 
chastity and giving away all that he has, through long 
night watches on the mountains and washings in the 
sunlit streams and sweet food untainted by blood, 
through praises and thanks and joy ascending before 
him — 

All, all conventions left aside, all limitations passed, 
all shackles dropped — the husks and sheaths of ages 
falling off — 

At length the Wanderer returns to heaven. (To- 
wards Democracy, pp. 234-5.) 

The poem After Long Ages is indeed the poetical 
expression of Carpenter's philosophy of history, which 
he has set forth more systematically in an essay on Civil- 
ization : Its Cause and Cure, the initial paper in his 
book of that name. His prose naturally appeals to a 
much larger audience than his poetry. Those who are 
unacquainted with his writings and have no special pre- 
dilection for ' ' prose-poems ' ' should first read this vol- 
ume of essays, which for originality and brilliancy it 
would be hard to match in recent literature. We are 
accustomed to look upon our modern civilization, with 
its machinery, its overgrown cities, its noise and bustle, 
as a kind of finality, and upon the life of the future as 
an indefinite advance in the same direction, but Car- 



22 Edward Carpenter 

penter undertakes to prove from history that the present 
is only a temporary stage of development, like all 
former civilizations, involving much evil as well as good 
— in fact, a * * kind of disease which the various races of 
men have to pass through, as children pass through 
measles or whooping cough. " (Civilization: Its Cause 
and Cure, p. i.) That disease, mental as well as physi- 
cal, is particularly prevalent among civilized peoples is 
certainly true. The earlier stages of evolution, savagery 
and barbarism, were at least comparatively healthy. 
The primary cause of the change from barbarism to 
civilization seems to be the gradual recognition of private 
property as distinguished from communal ownership. 
The old power of the clan gives way to a society of 
classes founded upon differences of wealth. Slavery, 
serfdom and the wagesystem follow, rent and interest 
spring up, and with these and to protect them come the 
state and the policeman. A glance at the great civilizations 
of the world shows that they generally flourish for about 
one thousand years. Among the unhealthy symptoms 
which mark this period with us is the "sense of sin," 
which, however useful it may be in securing progress, is 
in itself surely a morbid indication. The legends of a 
Golden Age go to prove that the race remembers a time 
when its mind was more at peace with itself. From this 
point Carpenter investigates the true meaning of 
''health, " a term which really denotes a positive 



Poet and Prophet 23 

* * wholeness ' ' and unity, rather than the mere negative 
absence of disease which is the ideal of the medical pro- 
fession. His idea of health is that of a man at one with 
himself, the soul reigning at the center over the body 
and holding all passions and desires in proper subjec- 
tion. Disease is an insubordinate center establishing 
itself in opposition to the true center of life. When the 
rebellious center gains the upper hand we have death, 
but such a death is far from being the euthanasia which 
should usher man into the unseen future. 

Death is simply the loosening and termination of the 
action of this power over certain regions of the organ- 
ism, a process by which, when these superficial parts 
become hardened and osseous, as in old age, or irre- 
parably damaged, as in cases of accident, the inward 
being sloughs them off and passes into other spheres. 
In the case of man there may be noble and there may 
be ignoble death, as there may be noble and ignoble 
life. The inward self, unable to maintain authority over 
the forces committed to its charge, declining from its 
high prerogative, swarmed over by parasites, and fallen 
partially into the clutch of obscene foes, may at last with 
shame and torment be driven forth from the temple in 
which it ought to have been supreme. Or, having ful- 
filled a holy and wholesome time, having radiated divine 
life and love through all the channels of body and mind, 
and as a perfect workman uses his tools, so having with 
perfect mastery and nonchalence used all the materials 
committed to it, it may quietly and peacefully lay these 



24 Edward Carpenter 

down, and unchanged (absolutely unchanged to all but 
material eyes) pass on to other spheres appointed. 

(lb. 17.) 

Why should man at the very moment of his highest 
development in civilization lose the healthy unity which 
prevails in lower forms of life ? The cause, Carpenter tells 
us, is self-knowledge. ' ' Man has to become conscious of 
his destiny — to lay hold of and realize his freedom and 
blessedness — to transfer his consciousness from the outer 
and mortal part of him to the inner and undying." (lb. 
22.) The human soul "has in fact to face the frightful 
struggle of self-consciousness, or the disentanglement of 
the true self from the fleeting and perishable self " (lb. 
24 ) This self-knowledge " is a temporary perversion, 
indicating the disunion of the present-day man — the dis- 
union of the outer self from the inner — the horrible dual 
self-consciousness — which is the means of a more per- 
fect and conscious union than could ever have been 
realized without it." (lb. 25.) The role of private 
property in bringing about this state of affairs is clear 
enough — it tends to separate him ' ' from nature, from 
his true self, from his fellows." (lb. 27.) It surrounds 
him with an artificial environment, it induces him to live 
in his possessions rather than in himself, and it gives 
him a selfish position among his neighbors. It stimu- 
lates the consciousness of a false self, for ' ' the true self 
of man consists in his organic relation with the whole 



Poet a7id Prophet 25 

body of his fellows. . . The mass-Man must rule in each 
unit-man, else the unit-man will drop off and die." 
(lb. 28.) Before "the delusion that man can exist for 
himself alone " (lb. 30), the tribal and community life 
disappears and modern governments take their place. 
Through monarchy, oligarchy and finally anarchic de- 
mocracy, society loses its sense of unity, the central 
inspiration departs from social life, and the body politic 
falls a prey to parasites which devour it. 

But this is no true Democracy. Here in this ' ' each 
for himself" is no rule of the Demos in every man, nor 
anything resembling it. . . . The true Democracy has 
yet to come. Here in this present stage is only the final 
denial of all outward and class government, in prepara- 
tion for the restoration of the inner and true authority. 
Here in this stage the task of civilization comes to an 
end ; the purport and object of all these centuries is ful- 
filled ; the bitter experience that mankind has to pass 
through is completed ; and out of this Death, and all 
the torture and unrest which accompanies it, comes at 
last the Resurrection. Man has sounded the depths of 
alienation from his own divine spirit, he has drunk the 
dregs of the cup of suffering, he has literally descended 
into Hell ; henceforth he turns, both in the individual 
and in society, and mounts deliberately and consciously 
back again towards the unity which he has lost. And 
the false Democracy parts aside for the disclosure of the 
true Democracy which has been formed beneath it — 
which is not an external government at all, but an inward 



26 Edward Carpenter 

rule — the rule of the mass-Man in each unit-man. * For 
no outward government can be anything but a make- 
shift — a temporary hard chrysalis-sheath to hold the 
grub together while the new life is forming inside. (lb. 
33-4-) 

And so in his prose as in his poetry Carpenter returns 
to the powerful simile, which is not all a simile, of the 
husk, the sheath, the chrysalis — the narrow ossified rep- 
resentative of ancient life, protecting and yet tending to 
suffocate the new life formed within, and at last thrown 
off by it, the same process to be ever repeated as long 
as the universe lives and grows. To this throwing off 
of the husk he applies a term of Whitman's, "exfolia- 
tion, ' ' and he shows that ' * the process of evolution or 
exfoliation itself is nothing but a continual unclothing of 
Nature, by which the perfect human form which is at 
the root of it comes nearer and nearer to its manifesta- 
tion." (lb. 36). He gives at the end of his book a 
separate essay on Exfoliation, so strongly has the idea 
impressed itself upon his imagination. In it he studies 
evolution in himself, as the entity best known to him, 
and finds that the most important factor in variation 
must be sought in an inner law of growth and not in 
environment. 

Every change begins in the mental region — is felt first 

* Dhammapada, chap. XII, v. 160. " Self is the lord of self, who else could be 
the lord ?"— Sacred Books of the East. 



Poet and Prophet 27 

in a desire gradually taking form in thought, passes 
down into the bodily region, expresses itself in action 
(more or less dependent on conditions), and finally 
solidifies itself in organization and structure. The pro- 
cess is not accretive but exfoliatory — a continual move- 
ment from within outwards. (lb. 138.) 

So in society today 

a dim feeling of discontent pervades all ranks and 
classes. A new sense of justice, of fraternity, has de- 
scended among us, which is not satisfied with mere 
chatter of demand and supply. For a long time this 
new sentiment or desire remains vague and unformed, 
but at last it resolves itself into shape ; it takes intellect- 
ual form, books are written, plans formed ; then after a 
time definite new organizations, for the distinct purpose 
of expressing these ideas, begin to exist in the body of 
the old society ; and before so very long the whole outer 
structure of society will have been reorganized by them. 

(lb. 139.) 

And all this takes place in the same way as in physical 
organisms. Desire is then the motive force in creation. 
And * ' what then is desire — what is its culmination 
and completion in man ? Practically it is love. Love 
is the sum and solution of all desires in man." (lb. 
141.) 

This love, according to Carpenter, is * ' a worship of 
and desire for the human form. In our bodies it is a 
desire for the bodily human form ; in our interior selves 



28 Edward Carpenter 

it is a perception and worship of an ideal human form, 
it is the revelation of a Splendor dwelling in others, 
which — clouded and dimmed as it inevitably may come 
to be — remains after all one of the most real, perhaps 
the most real, of the facts of existence. " ( lb. 1 4 1 . ) The 
ideal which is sought thus becomes the cause of the 
forms which precede it. The real motive power in any 
series of phenomena is the last in point of time to un- 
fold and reveal itself, and the monkey is not the cause of 
the man but the man of the monkey. Carpenter gives 
as an example the case of a volcanic eruption in which 
the cause of all the commotion, the subterranean fire, 
appears last of all. A new idea in like manner may 
upheave the surface of society for a long time before it 
can take visible shape in a new order of things. ' ' The 
work of each age is not to build 07i the past, but to rise 
out of the past and throw it off." (lb. 144.) Our 
author concludes that the real cause of any given thing 
is not to be found so much preceding it as under it and 
on another plane, as, for instance, the bricks are not the 
cause of the house but rather the idea of the house is 
the cause of the bricks made for it. One grouping of 
atoms cannot cause another subsequent one, but both 
are * ' determined by a third something which does not 
belong to quite the same order of existence as the said 
atoms." (lb. 142.) To discover the relations of leaves 
on a tree to each other, we must go to the root, and a 



Poet arid Prophet 29 

science which sees only the surface is necessarily shallow. 
The key to evolution lies in the ' ' ultimate disclosure of 
the ideal man," and in him alone, at the end of the un- 
folding and exfoliations, will be revealed the cause and 
explanation of all that went before. 

The true development of man consists, then, in a 
gradual unfolding, as in the case of a flower ; he must 
cast off in due time the old customs and institutions 
which have ceased to be useful and now only serve to 
hamper his progress. In an almost literal sense Carpen- 
ter would have him unclothe himself, or at any rate sim- 
plify his clothing — for he has little patience with the 
garments now dictated by fashion, the top-hat, starched 
shirt and collar, and foot-disfiguring boot. He pictures 
man as he retires from the simplicity of nature, clothing 
himself in apparel ' ' more and more fearfully and won- 
derfully fashioned, till he ceases to be recognizable 
as the man that was once the crown of the animals, 
and presents a more ludicrous appearing spectacle 
than the monkey that sits on his own barrel-organ." 
(lb. 26.) 

Carpenter would persuade man to return to a more nat- 
ural life, rather out of doors than shut up in the ' ' boxes 
with breathing holes which he calls houses, ' ' eating plainer 
food, vegetable rather than animal, and preserving the 
natural power of his nerves and muscles by the rational 
exercise of useful physical labor. Nor does he fear any 



30 Edward Carpenter 

relapse to barbarism from the adoption of such an ideal. 
There would be more humanity and sociability, more 
true art and beauty, than ever. All the appliances of 
civilization must be " reduced to abject subjection to the 
real man ;" they must no longer be the object of a mere 
fetish worship. Men will at last feel their unity with 
each other, with the animals and with the mountains 
and streams. He who is conscious of being an integral 
part of the living whole will cease to ask the whither and 
whence. 

For what causes these questions to be asked is simply 
the wretched feeling of isolation, actual or prospective, 
which man necessarily has when he contemplates him- 
self as a separate atom in this immense universe — the 
gulf which lies below seemingly ready to swallow him, 
and the anxiety to find some mode of escape. But 
when he feels once more that he, that he himself, is ab- 
solutely, indivisibly and indestructibly a part of this 
great whole — why then there is no gulf into which he 
can possibly fall. (lb. 46. ) 

He will become conscious of the * ' cosmic self. ' ' Car- 
penter sees in the society in which he lives two move- 
ments which tend to lead towards the new order, at the 
same time acting as correctives upon each other, namely, 
that towards individual freedom and savagery and that 
towards a complex human communism. In them he 
sees the hope of the world. 



Poet and Prophet 31 

Carpenter criticises most stingingly the scientific tem- 
per of the day. He can speak fi-om the book, as he is 
a man of scientific attainments and representative of the 
best which the scientific education of Great Britain can 
afford. In his essays on Modern Science and the Science 
of the Future he follows in Stallo's* footsteps in chal- 
lenging the accuracy of the fundamental formulae of 
science. He shows that the theory of the law of gravi- 
tation is faulty, that we have no idea of the actual course 
of any planet in space, that such conceptions as that of 
an atom or of luminiferous ether are nonsense, and that 
the undulatory theory of light and the so-called laws of 
the conservation of energy and the survival of the fittest 
are equally meaningless and absurd. In short, nothing 
is less certain than the laws of science, and they only 
seem to work at all in those regions with which we are 
least familiar. Thus, astronomy is the most exact 
science because we know the least about it, while psych- 
ology can hardly be termed a science at all, because we 
are face to face with it, see its intricacy and are totally 
unable to disentangle its laws. The radical mistake 
which men of science have made consists in their disre- 
gard of the human element, of the palpitating life in us 
which underlies the whole. Science has confined its 
studies to intellectual phenomena. ' ' She has failed 

* Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics. By J. B. Stallo. New York : D, 
Appleton & Co., 1882. 



32 Edward Carpefiter 

because she has attempted an impossible task ; for the 
discovery of a permanently valid and purely intellectual 
representation of the universe is simply impossible. 
Such a thing does not exist. ' ' (Civilization : Its Cause 
and Cure, p. 52.) The scientist tries to get away from 
man — to get away, in other words, from that which he 
knows best in his own consciousness and experience. 
But the truth is that * ' the very facts of Nature, as we 
call them, are at least half feeling." (lb. 82.) All 
scientific reasoning begins with axioms which are nothing 
but feelings, and thought is invariably " the expression, 
the outgrowth, the covering of underlying feeling." 
(lb. 86.) True science, when at last it makes its ap- 
pearance, will not be an irreverent dissection of Nature, 
but rather a sympathetic walking with her, * ' the life of 
the open air, and on the land and the waters, the com- 
panionship of the animals and the trees and the stars, 
the knowledge of their habits at first hand." (lb. 92.) 
' * Science has two alternatives before it — either to be 
merely intellectual and to seek for its star-point in some 
quite external (and imaginary) thing, like the Atom, or 
to be divine and to seek for its absolute in innermost 
recesses of humanity." (lb. 93-4.) It is in the uni- 
versal consciousness again that Carpenter would place 
the source and object of true science. 

But the most interesting results of Carpenter's con- 
victions, the natural consequence of his ^consciousness of 



Poet a?td Prophet 33 

universal unity) are to be found in the realm of sociology 
and political economy. If he and the criminal are one, 
he cannot cast the first stone at the criminal. He demon- 
strates in fact that in various ages and nations the stand- 
ard of morals has ranged from pole to pole. The Spar- 
tans applauded lying and theft. In one country the en- 
closure of land is a crime, in another it is the trespasser 
upon enclosed land who is the criminal. Polygamy is a 
sin here and a virtue there. The prevailing code of 
morals is always that of the dominant class, and today 
morality hinges upon the sanctity of private property. 
It will hinge on something higher in the day of brother- 
hood and equality. Man will reach a loftier plane of 
ethics when ' * he comes to know and feel himself a part 
of society through his inner nature." The solution 
here as in all else lies in the deepening of man's con- 
sciousness. Meanwhile the criminal may be performing 
a service to society in keeping alive instincts which are 
condemned at the present hour, but which may have 
been regarded as praiseworthy in other times and which 
may be necessary to humanity. The deepening of con- 
sciousness means union and love, and * ' between lovers 
there are no duties and rights." (lb. 124.) When we 
feel our oneness with society, there can no longer be a 
clashing between our interests and those of the whole of 
which we form a part. 

How different from all this are the aspirations and 



34 Edward Carpenter 

practices ot the men who guide society and how skill- 
fully Carpenter punctures the bubbles in which they de- 
light in his England's Ideal ! He perceives that *'the 
pervading aim and effort of personal life, either con- 
sciously or unconsciously entertained, is to maintain our- 
selves at the cost of others — to live at the expense of 
other folks' labor, without giving an equivalent of our 
own labor in return, and, ' ' he adds, ' ' if this is not dis- 
honesty, I don't know what is !" What is England's 
ideal, he asks, and what of all civilized peoples ? Is it 
not to get as much and give as little as you can ? (Eng- 
land' s Ideal, pp. 3-5.) Here is the ideal of the popu- 
lar fancy — "to live dependent on others, consuming 
much and creating next to nothing — to occupy a spa- 
cious house, have servants ministering to you, dividends 
converging from various parts of the world towards you, 
workmen handing you the best part of their labor as 
profits, tenants obsequiously bowing as they disgorge 
their rent, and a good balance at the bank. ' ' And he 
shows how for every man who consumes more than he 
creates there must be one at least who has to create more 
than he consumes. Undue wealth is balanced by undue 
poverty. ' * As far as the palaces of the rich stretch 
through Mayfair and Belgravia and South Kensington, 
so far (and farther) must the hovels of the poor inevita- 
bly stretch in the opposite direction." (lb. 6.) And 
he concludes, as every honest observer must conclude, 



Poet and Prophet 35 

that the ' ' whole GentiHty business is corrupt through- 
out, and will not bear looking into for a moment. It is 
incompatible with Christianity (at least as Christ appears 
to have taught it) ; it gives a constant lie to the doc- 
trine of human brotherhood. The wretched man who 
has got into its toils must surrender that most precious of 
all things — the human relation to the mass of mankind." 
(lb. 7.) What is the meaning of an " independence" 
by which a man is enabled to cease from labor and to 
become absolutely dependent on the labor of others? 
Carpenter explains it. 

One man accumulates enough money to bring him in a 
substantial income — say ^500 a year. Then that man 
is safe. He has escaped from the labor of feeding him- 
self and his children and may fold his arms and amuse 
himself as he likes ; he has got on the dry land beyond 
the flood, and this in perpetuity practically. . . Presently 
another man accumulates the desired amount. He also 
"retires" and is safe. Then a third and fourth. Then 
hundreds and thousands, then a considerable portion of 
the whole nation — where shall we stop ? . . . What is 
happening ? This is happening — a vast and ever vaster 
proportion of the nation is getting by force of existing 
rights and machinery to live on the labor of the rest. 
Every day, of those who are harnessed to the car of 
national life and prosperity, one or another, by dint of 
extra forethought, prudence, miserliness, cunning, or 
whatever it may be, gets an advantage over the rest, 
leaves them, jumps iyiside the car, and thenceforth in- 



36 Edward Carpenter 

stead of drawing is drawn. The end is only too obvious. 
It is a reductio ad absurdum of national life. It is break- 
down, smashup — and the car left in the ditch. (lb. 
26-7.) 

Edward Carpenter goes on to prove the wrongfulness 
of interest, resulting as it does in the formation of an idle, 
useless class in society. A coat costs naturally the 
value of the material and the labor bestowed on it ; 
whence then comes the profit of the capitalist ? It must 
be deducted from the cost of material or labor, and if 
full price has been paid for the material, it comes from 
labor. The result is the overwork and underpay of the 
laborer who should be able, according to the best au- 
thorities, to support himself with three or four hours' 
work a day. Our author investigates the matter of divi- 
dends from this point of view. The shareholder is a 
new kind of monster among property owners ; he has 
no duties, no practical supervision — no knowledge often 
— of his property ; he does nothing but pocket his share 
of these unearned ' ' profits." The fact is that the wage 
earner receives but a fraction of what he produces, a 
truth which Carpenter establishes at length in his essay 
on the Meaning of Dividends, and he explains how com- 
mercial crises arise from this. 

Since the wage workers, the mass of the people . . . 
receive in wages only a portion (say a half) ... of the 
value which they actually produce and distribute, it is 



Poet and Prophet 37 

evident that in any given time, say a year, they will only 
be able to buy back 07ie half of the goods they have 
thus put on the market during that time. Who then 
buys the other half of the goods ? Clearly not the capi- 
talist and landlord classes. They — though they receive 
the money credits sufficient to enable them to buy the 
other half — do not really buy to this amount ; for being 
few in number they cannot possibly use this enormous 
mass of goods ; besides we know as a matter of tact 
that they save up a large part of their money credits and 
reinvest them abroad. Hence at the end of the year 
there remains a mass of goods . . . which is not bought 
by the masses or by the classes — by the masses because 
they have not the money — by the classes because they 
do not want the goods. (England's Ideal 43.) 

From this accumulation of unsold goods, increasing 
every year, results the discharge of wage earners, the for- 
mation of an army of unemployed, and all the industrial 
ills which are ascribed to overproduction. If on the 
other hand each wage worker received the full value of 
his labor, there would be for all the products of labor a 
steady demand which would regulate itself. It is that 
portion of his earnings which goes to profit, including 
rent and interest, that causes hard times. And what is 
the permanent result of the "appropriation of bal- 
ances?" — 

an enormous class . . . living in idleness and luxury, 
they and their children and their children's children, till 



38 Edward Carpenter 

they become quite incapable of doing anything for them- 
selves, or even of thinking rightly about most things, 
tormented with incurable ennui and general imbecility 
and futility ; all art and literature which were the ap- 
pendage of this class being affected by a kind of St. 
Vitus' dance, and the whole thing breaking put finally 
• for want of any other occupation into a cuff and collar 
cult, called respectability. (lb. 126.) 

And he draws a picture of these respectable people, 
living in the ' ' desirable mansions ' ' which we see ad- 
vertised in the newspapers, shut out from the real life of 
the world and everything done for them, calling them- 
selves educated because they know books, but ignorant 
of the plainest and most necessary processes of daily 
life and unable to exercise their natural human sympa- 
thies towards their neighbors except at arm's length. 

By the side of the road there stands a little girl cry- 
ing : she has lost her way. It is very cold, and she 
looks pinched and starved. ' ' Come in, my little girl, 
and sit by my cottage fire, and you'll soon get warm ; 
and I'll see if I can't find you a bit of something to eat 
before you go on. . . . Eh, dear ! how stupid I am — I 
quite forgot. I am sorry I can't ask you in, but I am 
living in a desirable mansion now — and though we are 
very sorry for you, yet you see we could hardly have 
you into our house, for your dirty little boots would 
make a dreadful mess of our carpets, and we should 
have to dust the chairs after you had sat upon them, 
and you see Mrs. Vavasour might happen to come in, 



Poet and Prophet 39 

and she would think it so very odd ; and I know cooks 
can't bear beggars, and O dear ! I'm so sorry for you — 
and here's a penny for you, and I hope you'll get home 
safely." (lb. 79-80.) 

Verily it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye 
of a needle than for a rich man to enter into those hu- 
man relations with his fellows which constitute the king- 
com of heaven ! (lb. 175.) 

The way of escape for the individual lies in simplicity 
of life and in sharing the manual labor of the world. This 
will fit him better for the larger affairs which he may be 
called upon to conduct. What we need is a new ideal 
of daily life, "some better conception of human dig- 
nity — such as shall scorn to claim anything for its own 
which has not been duly earned, and such as shall not 
find itself degraded by the doing of any work however 
menial, which is useful to society." (lb. 72.) And how 
shall this new ideal be preached ? ' ' There is no need 
to talk — perhaps the less said about these matters the 
better — but if you have such new ideal within you, it is 
I believe your clearest duty, as well as your best inter- 
est, to act it out in your own life." (lb. 72.) 

There seems but one immediate step that the wealthy 
despoiler can take — which at the same time is a most 
obvious step — and that is at once or as soon as ever he 
can, to place his life on the very simplest footing. And 
this for several reasons. First, because if he must live 



4© Edward Carpenter 

by other people's labor — and in some cases doubtless his 
' ' education ' ' will leave him no other alternative — it is 
clearly his duty to consume as little of that commodity 
as he possibly can. . . . Secondly, because only by liv- 
ing simply — that is, on a level of simplicity at least equal 
to that of the mass of the people — is it possible to know 
the people, to become friends with them, to gauge their 
wants. . . . Thirdly, because by such a natural life the 
cares and anxieties of a luxurious household — the innu- 
merable fidgets and worries and obstacles to all true life, 
together with the dread about being able to maintain it 
all in the future — are once and for all got rid of. A 
great load drops off, and, the Rubicon once crossed, the 
difficulties attending the change are seen to be nothing 
compared with the increased happiness which it brings. 
Fourthly, because it is only on the knowledge and habits 
gained in a hard self-supporting life that the higher 
knowledge and the fine arts are really founded. ( lb. 176. ) 

This is the individual ideal, and the social ideal in- 
volves the multiplication of such individuals, cooperat- 
ing in practical socialism. And he strongly recommends 
any course which will further the cause of cooperation 
in any way. (lb. 51.) 

Thus it is that Carpenter would lead the race on be- 
yond a civilization dominated by private property, while 
recognizing the part that such property has played 
in the evolution of the past. (England's Ideal 157.) 
And what has private ownership become ? It is not so 
much the right to use as to prevent others from using. 



Poet and Prophet 41 

"It is the power to turn all the inhabitants off your land 
and convert it into a deer forest, or to prevent anyone 
from tilling any part of your soil. The landlords of 
England might starve the English people out." (lb. 
141.) The absurdity of such a "right" is self-evi- 
dent, and yet the same negative principle is involved in 
all private property. It is not the power to use the 
property yourself, for you may be quite incapable of 
cultivating your acres or of using your telescope, and 
yet you may prevent others, who are anxious to render 
these things useful to society, from doing so. (lb. 141.) 
Real ownership involves mastery of the thing owned and 
ability to make the best possible use of it ; but this fact 
is ignored by our laws and customs. It is well that this 
false ideal of wealth, which Ruskin calls " illth," should 
be finally rejected and that men should establish a living 
relationship to their material surroundings. Accumula- 
tions of mere "things " are a sign of disease, just as is 
the accumulation of fat in an over-corpulent man. * ' It 
is only when a man enters into the region of equality 
that a solution offers itself In finding the true Property 
of Man he finds the secret of all ownership, and in sur- 
rendering all rights of private property, and accept- 
ing poverty, he really becomes possessed of all social 
wealth, and, for the first time, infinitely rich." (lb. 
154.) Once again Carpenter comes back to his central 
truth : 



42 Edward Carpenter 

To build up the Supreme Life in a people — the life of 
Equality — in which each individual passes out of him- 
self along the lives of his fellows, and in return receives 
their life into himself with such force that he becomes 
far greater as an individual than ever before — partaker 
of the supreme power and well nigh irresistible — to build 
up this life in a people may well be a task worthy of the 
combined efforts of poets, philosophers and statesmen. 
The whole of history and all the age-long struggles of the 
nations point to its realization. Even now society like 
a chrysalis writhes in the birth-throes of the winged 
creature within. Equality — the vanishing of the cen- 
turies-long conflict between the individual and his fel- 
lows — the attainment by each man of a point where all 
this war of interests ceases to exist, and the barriers 
which divide man from man are thrown down — this is 
indeed that Freedom for which all of history has been 
one long struggle and preparation. (lb. 164-5.) 

Nor will this equality be a state of dreary monotony, but 
rather the ' ' equality of the members of the body ' ' ful- 
filling their various functions in perfect inward harmony. 
Does this call to equality require too much self- 
denial on the part of those who are invited to give up 
their superfluity ? Is there too much of asceticism in the 
suggestion? Carpenter sees the danger, although he 
has perhaps made his own life a little too bare in its ex- 
ternals, if we are to believe those who have visited him. 
While he inculcates moderation in eating, he thinks that 
' * this has to be varied by an occasional orgy. . . . The 



Poet and Prophet 43 

orgy should not be omitted. Among other things it 
restores the moral tone and prevents — a very important 
point — all danger of lapse into pharisaism !" (lb. 105.) 
The same sanity which dictates this unusual advice shows 
itself again when he sings the praises of love, but he adds : 
''When society becomes so altruistic that everybody 
runs to fetch the coal scuttle, we feel sure that something 
has gone wrong. " (Civilization: Its Cause and Cure 113). 
We have already noted that Carpenter has no fear for 
the fate of art in the world of his dreams. Our idea of 
art as a mere ornament is altogether faulty. ' ' You can- 
not make your rooms beautiful by buying an expensive 
vase and putting it on the mantelshelf, but if you live an 
honest life in it, it will grow beautiful in proportion as it 
comes to answer to the wants of such a life." (Eng- 
land's Ideal 109-110. ) We must refer the reader to 
his Angels' Wings, the whimsically named volume in 
which he treats of art and music, for a full discussion of 
this question. "The object of the fine arts," he says 
(and he has read Tolstoi's What Is Art? to good pur- 
pose), "is to convey an emotion." (Angels' Wings 
42. ) The proper question to be asked as to a work 
of art is, " What contagion oi feeling does it communi- 
cate from the breast of the author to that of his audi- 
ence?" (lb. 45.) The highest emotion which can be 
conveyed in this way is " a sense of harmony or health 
of the Soul itself — the stirring within us of some divine 



44 Edward Carpenter 

and universal Being — to be capable of feeling which is 
indeed the most excellent prerogative of Man : a sense 
which we endeavor to express by the word Beauty, and 
the conveyance of which is the highest message of Art. ' ' 
(lb. 78-9. ) Carpenter never wanders far from this great 
thought ; religion as well as art will eventually turn 
upon it. 

The Religion of the future must come from the bosom 
itself of the modern peoples ; it must be the recognition 
by Humanity as a whole of that Common Life which 
has really underlain all the various religions of the past ; 
it must be the certainty of the organic unity of man- 
kind, of the brotherhood of all sentient creatures, free- 
ing itself from all local doctrine and prejudice, and ex- 
pressing itself in any and every available form. The 
seal and sanction of the Art of the future will be its 
dedication to the service of this religion. (lb. 135-6.) 

The function of art ' ' consists in actually drawing 
human beings together. . . To make mankind realize 
their unity, to make \h.&cs\feel it, that will be the inspira- 
tion and the province of art." (lb. 137.) 

At the root of Beauty and the art sense Carpenter 
finds the sexual instincts, and in Love's Coming of Age 
he explains his views of these important matters from 
his new standpoint. 

Sex is the allegory of Love in the physical world. It 
is from this fact that it derives its immense power. The 
LefC. 



Poet and Prophet 45 

aim of Love is non-differentiation — absolute union of 
being ; but absolute union can only be found at the cen- 
ter of existence. Therefore whoever has truly found 
another has found not only that other and with that other 
himseh, but has found also a third — who dwells at the 
center and holds the plastic material of the universe in 
the palm of his hand, and is a creator of sensible forms. 
(Love's Coming of Age 20.) 

In short, "the prime object of Sex is union,'''' (lb. 
21), physical, mental, spiritual. It is in subordination 
to this conception that men should marry and give in 
marriage, and it is easy for a writer who takes this high 
ground to expose the shams involved in our present con- 
ventions, and it is natural that he should express the 
hope for a more fluid, less rigid, state of society in the 
future. I should not recommend Carpenter (nor any 
one else) as an infallible guide in this matter (nor in any 
other), but his treatment of it is full of originality and 
suggestion. 

Carpenter's idea of sex as the basis of universal unity 
naturally involves the question of the relationship to 
each other of members of the same sex, as well as of 
those of opposite sexes. In his group of poems corre- 
sponding to the Calamus of Whitman he celebrates com- 
radeship in terms worthy of the ancient Greeks. Such 
sentiments are not often spoken of publicly in these days, 
but it is irrational to condemn them offhand as inverted 



46 Edward Carpenter 

and abnormal. All variations from the commonplace 
are abnormal, the good as well as the bad. Genius and 
philanthropy are abnormal, and the race would come to 
a standstill if it did not have such abnormal variations 
among which to choose its pathway. If, as Carpenter 
supposes — and with a good deal of plausibility — all 
affection has its basis in the sexual instincts, there is a 
degree of inversion in the love of father for son, of son 
for father, and of sisters for each other. Carpenter sees 
the drawbacks in our present system of intersexual rela- 
tions, with its large proportion of unhappy marriages 
and the hypocrisy and suffering they entail — the binding 
together for life of illassorted pairs upon the false assump- 
tion that God has joined them, and the sickening cant 
which proscribes all attempts to look the situation in the 
face and find some remedy for it. He has manfully 
grappled with the problem and he deserves our thanks 
for his courage and frankness, but I do not believe that 
much is to be expected from close friendships of a ro- 
mantic nature between persons of the same sex. Such 
friendships, as we often see them between young girls, 
involve all the jealousies and selfishness of normal court- 
ship and have none of the physiological and domestic 
sanctions. 

I confess that I feel no call to undertake the settlement 
of these troublesome questions of sex. In some future 
incarnation I may have them forced upon me, but for the 



Poet and Prophet 47 

present I see no solution and do not know in which di- 
rection to search for one. Where divorce and promis- 
cuity have become common, we see less contentment 
and more disorder. Celibacy is sometimes proposed as 
the highest ideal, and we are told that to conceive of 
Christ, the perfect man, in the marriage relation, is to 
derogate from his dignity. At first blush this seems 
true, and yet Christendom has refused to accept this 
celibate ideal and has provided the master with the 
church itself as a bride. In doing so it has been in 
harmony with the universal rule of religious history, for 
the religious feelings, with their full flower of love to 
God and neighbor, seem everywhere grounded in sex. 
This, too, implies inversion, or rather development, in 
our primary instincts, and their extension from a single 
individual to all mankind. It is possible that through 
its pioneers the race may advance from ordinary * ' falling 
in love " to a kindred passion for all life, and Carpenter's 
group of poems to which I have referred has a marked 
tendency in this direction, for he makes them culminate 
in a general, all-embracing love : 

Oh, I am greedy of love — all, all are beautiful to me ! 
You are my deliverers every one — from death, from sin, 

from evil. 
I float, I dissolve in you ! — (Towards Democracy 286. ) 

And again : 



48 Edward Carpenter 

So still to all— 

To those lingering in prison, 

To the aged and forsaken, stranded like wrecks on the 

bleak shores of life, 
To the heartbroken and weary — to the stunned with 

despair, . . . 
To you we give our love. (lb., 290.) 

That Carpenter recognizes fully the beauty of the mono- 
gamic ideal is shown by his poem The Golden Wedding, 
(lb. 306.) 

We have now completed our review of the lifework of 
this interesting man. If there is a more significant fig- 
ure in the England of today, I do not know it. The 
power of his character as revealed in his writings lies in 
the fact that it is the fruit of a rich experience. He 
does not give us booklearning or fancy or speculation or 
hypothesis, but like a traveler returning from a far 
country he tells what he has seen and investigated. If 
he prefers the hard-working classes, it is because he 
knows them intimately and finds them more truly men. 
It is no imaginary theory a la Rousseau. 

The fashionable, the intellectual and the commercial 
classes are each narrowed down in their different ways 
and along their own lines ; that greater class which lives 
in more direct contact with Nature and the actual facts 
of life seems to me (notwithstanding the specially trying 
circumstances of its life at the present day) to be by far 



Poet and Prophet 49 

the most human ; and I shall always be glad that I have 
come to know it, as I have done, and to learn some of 
the best lessons of my life from it. (England's Ideal 
53-4-) 

Thus enjoying the sense of universal unity in the 
bosom of the "lower" classes, Carpenter is passing his 
life, now and again acquainting such part of the world 
as may heed him with his discoveries and experiences. 
He finds particular pleasure in music, and a piano is 
among his few material treasures. He has edited Chants 
of Labor, and is the author and composer of the words 
and music of the fine socialist national anthem (if this be 
not a contradiction in terms) England Arise ! His de- 
votion to Beethoven, the democratic prince of musicmen, 
and his deep understanding of him, are shown in the la- 
ter essays of Angels' Wings. He is also, I am told, a 
personal friend of the first of living composers, the Nor- 
wegian Grieg, who is said to be of a radical turn of mind 
and more or less in sympathy with his English admirer. 
Carpenter has lately taken up with enthusiasm the cause 
of his dumb fellow creatures. Nor does he forget the 
oppressed peoples of the earth. His book of travels in 
India, From Adam's Peak to Elephanta, presents the 
unwonted spectacle of an Englishman actually regarding 
his Hindoo fellow subjects as friends and equals. It is 
characteristic of him that he finds more to commend in 
the Salvation Army in India than in any other British 



50 Edward Carpenter 

institution there established. The manual labor with 
which he diversifies his agricultural work — the manufac- 
ture of sandals — has as its object the freeing of the 
human foot from the stiff, impermeable leather boxes 
in which it is at present deformed and befouled. The 
boot is a symbol of the husks of which mankind must 
rid itself before it can attain to the human form divine 
and blossom into the long-awaited unity. When that 
day comes — when at last men's feet are shod with the 
winged sandals of Hermes which free and do not confine 
them — then we may be sure that the name of Edward 
Carpenter will be cherished as that of one of the guides 
and benefactors of the race, a true messenger of the gods 
and a healer of mankind. 



Works of Edward Carpenter 



Civilization. Its Cause and Cure $i.o6 

" No passing piece of polemics, but a permanent possession." — 
Scottish Review. 



England's Ideal ;^i.05 

"The literary power is unmistakable, their freshness of style, 
their humor, and their enthusiasm." — Pall Mall Gazette. 



Towards Democracy ;^2.I2 

"A remarkable work." — Academy. 



Either of the above books will be sent postpaid on receipt of price by 

Walter L. Sinton, jo Dearborn Street, Chicago, III. 



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